March 28, 2012

In this country of 300,000,000+, it shouldn't be too hard for the national media to come up with actual news stories to illustrate its favorite themes of White Racism, the Invalidity of Stereotypes, and so forth. And yet, when the prestige press decides to go all in on a story to Push the Narrative, like Duke Lacrosse case or Jena Six, they usually seem to wind up with another travesty, playing Walter Sobchak with poor Donnie's ashes at the end of The Big Lebowski (video).

The Trayvon Martin story was supposed to demonstrate how white people invidiously stereotype young black males and get away with murder because they are white. First, though, it turned out that George Zimmerman wasn't what most people are told to think of as white.

Then it turned out the poor Trayvon had never gotten the anti-stereotyping message himself. In fact, judging from his Twitter account, Trayvon loved stereotypes of young black males as violent, criminal, and dangerous, and was working hard to polish his own thug image.

For his Twitter handle, he chose the title of a rap song that I won't repeat (but you can listen to it here and read the lyrics here), by Kane and Abel and featuring C-Murder. According to Wikipedia, "Corey Miller (born March 9, 1971), better known by his stage name C-Murder, is an American rapper and convicted murderer."

(By the way, what's the deal with the gold foil on the teeth? I guess I'm out of touch with today's youth because I don't get that at all.)

This, the three suspensions from school, the school's suspicion of jewel thievery or fencing ... well, none of this is terribly conclusive, but it should give pause to the mainstream media's drive to rile up lynch mobs to go after the shooter. First, it suggests that Zimmerman's assessment of Trayvon as a potential burglar was, in fact, quite reasonable. He was found by his school with a backpack of silver jewelry for which he had no persuasive explanation.

Second, it adds weight to the notion that Zimmerman's version of the fatal encounter is conceivable. That doesn't mean it's wholly accurate, it just means that it doesn't sound terribly implausible.

Being a frothing at the mouth extremist, unlike the mainstream media, my view of this case has been that patience is the best advice. It reminds me of the homicide case against Michael Jackson's doctor for giving him that sleeping drug, in which the criminal justice system took over a half year to decide whether or not to arrest him. The doctor wasn't going anywhere, so what's the hurry? Get all the facts and think through the law. (I still don't know if that case was rightly decided, but I feel a little better that the authorities took their time about it and weren't stampeded into overly quick actions.)

As more facts emerge, the criminal justice system's behavior seems fairly reasonable. The myth is that the racist cops immediately let Zimmerman go due to White Privilege, but, in reality, they cuffed him and took him down to the station. There, he was questioned and the prosecutors decided that they didn't have a strong enough case to arrest him at present. Presumably, he has enough ties to the community relative to the only moderate severity of any potential charge, so he wasn't likely to go on the lam before they might change their mind.

One interesting argument I saw in an anonymous comment was the assertion that Zimmerman's father, who is some kind of judge, brought some sort of influence to bear on the prosecutors, or that at least the state listened more sympathetically to Zimmerman's story because of who his father was. I don't know of much evidence for or against this claim, one way or another, but it does not sound utterly implausible. But since it's too idiosyncratic to fit well into the main Racial Narrative that everybody is worked up over, it's been largely ignored.

What general lesson can society draw from the Trayvon case? Well, there's a win-win solution for how to get people to stop stereotyping young black males as thugs. Blacks should stop trying so damn hard to act like thugs.

P.S. A commenter writes:

"And yet, when the prestige press decides to go all in on a story to Push the Narrative, like Duke Lacrosse case or Jena Six, they usually seem to wind up with another travesty..."

They've eaten their own dog food. On the conscious level they actually believe their message. If they didn't, they'd look hard for the extremely rare cases of actual white-on-black rape and unprovoked violence. But since they do believe the message that they're spouting, they think that white racism is everywhere and that they don't have to look hard for it at all. Almost any case that involves whites and blacks will do. And when their message is reliably contradicted by that almost-any-case, they just think that THAT's an exception.

Yes, that makes sense. Everybody is an amateur statistician, and most people behave in their personal lives like pretty accurate ones (e.g., Jesse Jackson feels relief when he discovers that the people walking behind him down a dark street are white). But a working definition of a person who feels himself elite in modern America is that he doesn't integrate what he's learned from his daily life with his understanding of public affairs. There is mundane knowledge that you use when picking out where to live or where to send your child to school, but only ignorant people apply that knowledge to thinking about what's in the news. Instead, people with class only apply to their Higher Thought the Higher Knowledge that they picked up from reading, say, To Kill a Mockingbird in junior high school.

My view, in contrast is that, as the motto of Faber College in Animal House, pointed out: "Knowledge is good." The more we know, the better for everybody, overall. There shouldn't be disreputable knowledge that's kept apart from reputable knowledge. All knowledge is good.

I've been told that the reason it's bad for me to quote the Justice Department statistics on homicide rates by race is because everybody knows that and takes that into account when it comes to public policy, so it's just rude to mention it. But I see little evidence that elites are able to take into account Justice Department statistics in their Higher Thinking without articulating them in public. Instead, we just see repeated travesties in the press.

I'd add to the commenter's point that the media wants to find examples of whites not only doing terrible things to blacks but getting away with them because of White Privilege. And that turns out to be especially hard to find in 2012, contra so much that you are told by Hollywood and the press.

For example, here is an account of the sentencing to life imprisonment of a white teen in Mississippi last week who killed a black man for racist fun. (I suspect it was also a gaybashing, but that seems to have been not emphasized, for whatever reasons). This case got a fair amount of national publicity, much more than a case of blacks killing a white for fun would have. I watch about an hour of TV per week and yet even I'd seen it on a national news show many months ago.

Nonetheless, it was ultimately unsatisfying to the prestige press. They couldn't flog it too hard because there wasn't much controversy over it. It was understood to be a horrible crime, and justice was served. So, it's ultimately another boring and depressing story about lowlifes, just with the races aligned in the approved manner.

In contrast, the Trayvon tale sounded to the mainstream media like the case they'd been dreaming of since J-school: white man kills black child in cold blood and is freed because of White Privilege! So, they fell hard for a story molded by a lawyer and pushed by Al Sharpton. Not surprisingly, it turns out to be a lot more complicated and ambiguous, but by now they are all in, so they'll just have to push harder to denounce skeptics as racists. When you own the Megaphone, that's what you do.

129 comments:

Was listening to reports of today's SCOTUS proceedings, CNN went to commercial, then offered a promo of special.

Guess who is the moderator of a special of race and the Martin tragedy?

Soledad O'brien. Will she be tempted to identify with a man who has much in common with her or will she shill for the view preferred by members of her "profession"?

She might find misery loves company by inviting her former colleague at CNN, the fired Rick Sanchez and her Fox compatriot Geraldo Rivera, who just swallowed some of his noted machismo by apologizing to the elites and the professional racists by saying he was wrong in suggesting the hoodie contributed to the incident.

Was listening to reports of today's SCOTUS proceedings when CNN went to commercial, then offered a promo of special.

Guess who is the moderator of an upcoming CNN special on "race and the Martin tragedy"?

Soledad O'brien. Will she be tempted to identify with a man who has much in common with her or will she shill for the view preferred by members of her "profession"?

She might find misery loves company by inviting her former colleague at CNN, the fired Rick Sanchez and her Fox compatriot Geraldo Rivera, who just swallowed some of his infamous machismo by apologizing to the elites and the professional racists by saying he was wrong in suggesting the hoodie contributed to the incident.

"And yet, when the prestige press decides to go all in on a story to Push the Narrative, like Duke Lacrosse case or Jena Six, they usually seem to wind up with another travesty..."

They've eaten their own dog food. On the conscious level they actually believe their message. If they didn't, they'd look hard for the extremely rare cases of actual white-on-black rape and unprovoked violence. But since they do believe the message that they're spouting, they think that white racism is everywhere and that they don't have to look hard for it at all. Almost any case that involves whites and blacks will do. And when their message is reliably contradicted by that almost-any-case, they just think that THAT's an exception.

Two things threw the media, unfortunately for them and Mr. Zimmerman: his last name is "white" and the customary practice, at least in Florida, is to call Latinos white in official police documents. A couple years ago I asked a highly ranked officer in Hillsborough county about this, himself Latino, and he explained what we all know about FBI categorizations: White is a broad race, Hispanic is an ethnicity within that race. I don't know how they are treated in other parts of the country, or even other parts of Florida, but it seems s.o.p. here.

In fact, we had a manhunt, in which the assailant who was darker than Zimmerman, was being called "white" by law enforcement while on the loose without even the Hispanic qualifier. So, we're all looking out our blinds for a "white" guy. Since then, we've all mostly caught on to the new reality, but the national media has not.

Aw c'mon now Steve. That guy was a buffoon and it all came out in court. He was rich enough to get good lawyers and at least smart enough to help in his own defense. He was as guilty as O.J. but his victim was black, so justice was done.

"Instead, people with class only apply to their Higher Thought the Higher Knowledge that they picked up from reading, say, To Kill a Mockingbird in junior high school."

And even then, they get it wrong.

First, because To Kill a Mockingbird is not a story of racial injustice. It's a devoted daughter's valentine to her father. The whole book is about Atticus and his response to various situations in his family, neighborhood and community. In real life, her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, did defend two black men. But they were accused of theft, not rape, and apparently they actually were guilty. To make sure we know what a great guy her dad is, Lee ups the ante by making the black defendant, Tom Robinson, innocent of a much more inflammatory crime than theft. But after Tom is killed, the whole issue of the terrible wrong done him fades away because the real point of his case is to show what a great guy her dad is for defending him. (I'm not knocking that because apparently, he really was a great guy.) The last 40 pages of the novel are about the menace Bob Ewell presents to the Finch family and how it's resolved.

The kicker is that in novel, Atticus's famous court summation ends with a very un-PC jab at modern notions of equality and also at Eleanor Roosevelt. Weirdly, this didn't make it into the movie.

"One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious--because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe--some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others--some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal--there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you servev. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

I got a lot of laughs in 2010 when teachers and others of their ilk were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of TKAM. I'd see teacher's blogs going on breathlessly about what a fine anthem to anti-racism it was, etc. and I'd think, You people not only don't know how to think, you don't even know how to read.

The local Spanish radio station's morning talk show was sounding rather like Steve on this whole story, a couple days ago. I'm not sure how much of that was identity (Zimmerman being hispanic) and how much was just not being indoctrinated into the American racial consensus. (Since, being a first-generation immigrant from Peru or something, he probably feels very little responsibility for Jim Crow, slavery, the Rodney King beating, etc.)

The big media guys routinely get all kinds of stories wrong. I suspect they're worse on this kind of story, but hoestly, watching TV news to become informed about the world is probably sensible for a bright 12 year old or a foreigner trying to get the lay of the land, but not for an adult who wants to actually understand what's going on.

One failure mode of media is the narrative. Once the narrative on some issue has been established and built up, essentially all stories from respectable media sources will follow it. I assume that's laziness, but it may also be reaction to how the owners, advertisers, or other journalists respond when you depart from it.

Amng other things, this is behind John McCain's being able to run as a maverick outsider despite having spent decades in the Senate, or W being able to run as an ignorant good old boy, or Obama being able to run as a genius postracial rockstar. Once the story gets rolling, facts that don't agree with it somehow disappear from view.

I suspect that on racial issues, sticking to the narrative is also safer--you won't be suspected of racist thoughts or beliefs if you do. But I dont know that for sure-I've never been a journalist.

I have no idea why Steve and a lot of other Righties are hanging back on this case. I still haven't heard ONE SOLID FACT that indicates Zimmmerann's release was incorrect. Or that Zimmermann's version of events - as described by the Police - is wrong.

I still see nothing that shows beyond a "reasonable doubt" that it wasn't a justifiable homicide. Maybe some witness or forensic evidence will turn up, but I doubt it.

I saw the grainy film in the garage of the police dept. True, no blood but then the reports said paramedics treated him at the scene. However, other reports in articles have been wrong so those might have been to.

I thought, however, that those reports came from the police report. I wouldn't expect to be able to see a broken nose in that video. Supposedly, he went to the hospital the following day for treatment. There should be records.

I think one reason these incidents are so rare is that most urban blacks say among their own and rarely interact with whites, tending to congregate in their own neighborhoods. The few successful blacks are educated and articulate and mostly interact with urban liberals. There is little to no interaction in suburban areas, which are quite segregated.In rural areas, where one would think that there would be the most trouble, since it is populated by conservatives, evangelicals, tea partiers, etc, these incidents are hard to find as well because everyone in small towns knows one another and their families.

I wish the Latino self-appointed community leaders would step and go toe-to-toe With Revs. Al and Jesse.

In fact, if were designing a video game for myself based on this sad Trayvon Martin tragedy, the main character would be a super-charismatic Hispanic community leader. I would design the game along the lines of Mike Tyson's Punch-out. You (the player) are the leader of the Latino community in America (modeled on Don Flaminko). After preliminary trash-talking and boasting about la raza, you box Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in order to run them out of the neighborhood. In the second level, you hunt down members of the elite media with a .38. You lose if they get the jump on you and pound your head into the pavement.

I would resist the temptation to make it a 1st person shooter from Z's pt of view, or a 1st person running-away (or getting-the-jump) game from T's pt. of view.

'"I have no idea why Steve and a lot of other Righties are hanging back on this case."'

"Because I don't know what precisely happened."

That's mighty White of you:)

So as not to be misunderstood, this is my subtle way of saying that waiting for the facts and not jumping to conclusions is indeed a White European idiosyncrasy not to be expected of more vibrant types of people. Kind of puts us at a disadvantage.

The fallback for those failing to frame Zimmerman as a racist murderer is to frame him for "racial profiling", as in "racial profiling led to the encounter which resulted in the killing", so whatever occured in between the evil, racist profiling and the shooting is irrelevant.

But racial profiling, even if one is to take it seriously, is a problem of biased law enforcement authorities. Now we have a mere citizen--and one who may have reasonably feared for his life--accused of the Dread Sin of Paying Attention. Seems to me this represents a significant expansion of this dishonest charge.

But when will our liberal friends stop and take notice--the cardigan-wearing bespectacled scholar set upon by leering thugs never seems to appear--and, as you point out, in the rare case of white idiots setting upon an innocent black "white privilege" is the last thing in evidence--and God forbid we might try to understand the guilty here with the same empathy we are expected to show black criminals--that their animus, if not their actions, is predictable, considering the open malice and violence directed upon whites by blacks every day.

Why are all our civil rights icons of suffering now thugs or hapless fools (Rodney King is a twofer here)?

Gentlemen (T&B), not that it will help to reiterate this, but aren't you both half-wrong? If the story had stayed in the black subculture, we'd be talking about Peyton Manning or Angelina Jolie, or what-have-you, so clearly there's more than enough to go around for the massed Euro-whites bereft of a prudent Weltanschauung. Meanwhile, how does emphasizing your self-reported identity change the circumstantial criteria or lack thereof? In cyberspace no one can hear you scream, "I'm blacker ergo correcter"

Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, -- a lack of diversity at one of the region's largest employers that has led to an acknowledgment of failure in affirmative-action documents and spawned a series of lawsuits.

"When the accident happened in 2009, I called a supervisor and said, 'Is this the one we all dreaded?' The way workers do their jobs, we all knew it was a matter of time. … The inept get promoted, and the capable get buried. Smart people were put in the corner, ostracized and given nothing to do," said Christine Townsend, who sued Metro for discrimination and won.

It is a culture in which a white male engineer near completion of a Ph.D. was passed over for a management position in favor of a black man who was barely literate, multiple staffers said.

"In this country of 300,000,000+, it shouldn't be too hard for the national media to come up with actual news stories to illustrate its favorite themes of White Racism, the Invalidity of Stereotypes, and so forth."

Everyone knows what they are looking for, obvious trap is obvious as the memers would say.

Looking at the transcript, and consulting common sense, it is unlikely that he would note the skin color of someone from a distance, in the rain, after dark. Far more likely, he was doing behavioral profiling. Yes, that includes wearing a hoodie but also "just walking around looking about" and"staring" "looking at the houses". It isn't until later that he confirms his initial guess by saying "And he's a black male" AFTER he notes that he is walking toward him.

I consider myself something of an expert on the subject of broken noses. Mine first got straight-up broken in a random mugging by a 5’10’-6 ft tall black guy in a black hoodie and jeans. Actually, for real, not lying here. (Needless to say I didn’t bother to report it to the police. I seriously couldn’t have picked him up out of a line-up, and what, I want them to wander along Amsterdam Ave looking for 6 ft tall black guys in hoodies to hassle? What’s the point there? This was a long time ago, at the peak of NYC crime in the early 90s)

This is an example of the new kind of liberal: so stupid that even being mugged by reality can't wake them up.

Haha, awesome handle. Looks like we have a few more Hacker News renegades crossing into the Sailersphere! We really need to do a Steve Sailer takeover of the HN frontpage someday. I think pg is quietly sympathetic to HBD (http://paulgraham.com/say.html) though we shouldn't put him on the spot about it.

You would think there'd be more dustups between lower class redneck whites and blacks in the southern states, but that doesn't seem to happen much. What's the deal? Are Southerners wimpier than I thought? Or do blacks steer clear of tough country boys?

White southerners are belligerent by culture and heritage, but things are awfully quiet down there. Even when there's an occasional serious incident of white-on-black violence, it's often in a place like Bensonhurst or Howard Beach (both Italian, by the way).

White southerners are belligerent by culture and heritage, but things are awfully quiet down there. Even when there's an occasional serious incident of white-on-black violence, it's often in a place like Bensonhurst or Howard Beach (both Italian, by the way).

Whites and Blacks have been living alongside each other for centuries in the south. They have formed a culture. Sadly, HBDers are almost as blind to the importance of culture as liberals.

"You would think there'd be more dustups between lower class redneck whites and blacks in the southern states, but that doesn't seem to happen much. What's the deal? Are Southerners wimpier than I thought? Or do blacks steer clear of tough country boys?"

Young men risk their safety to stand their ground and get into fights because they are trying to create/preserve an image of someone strong, cool, courageous. they are trying to get respect and communicate that you can't mess with them- it won't work. Being labeled a racist destroys all those goals. I think most white tough guy wannabes steer clear of altercations with black men because it would bring all the trouble of a regular fight and more, and none of the benefits. Some layers of white society think that being violent, rebellious and a general bad ass is cool. No significant group/class in America thinks that racism is cool, and white boys know that that's the label they risk if they have any type of a public problem with a black person.

When I lived in Dallas, even in a mixed business with daily contact, the races kept respectful social distance from each other. I think they'd fought it all out earlier in the 60s and were enjoying a tacit truce.

I don't think modern southern guys are as belligerent as northerners assume, anyway. But stereotypes die hard.

White southerners are belligerent by culture and heritage, but things are awfully quiet down there. Even when there's an occasional serious incident of white-on-black violence, it's often in a place like Bensonhurst or Howard Beach (both Italian, by the way).

We've talked about this before at iSteve, and I've got nothing in the way of hard statistics to offer - other than my own personal anecdotal experience - but after a lifetime of living with them, I can't help but feel that rural blacks are just much better people [better "folk", as we say down here] than are urban blacks.

I'm sure this C-Murder character is a terrible person and probably did do the murder in question, but I had no idea there was any state in the Union, not even Napoleonic-Code-influenced Louisiana, where a unanimous jury verdict was not required. How long has that been the case?

Sailer must be feeling pretty smug right now, because George Zimmerman's Hispanic ancestry makes this a more complicated case than the media or politicians are equipped to handle. Obama certainly doesn't have the hardware to manage anything more complicated than typical black condescension toward whites (let me be clear, y'all don't understand how racist you are). If conservatives knew how to press this issue, it could become toxic for liberals, and it could shift the balance of racial allegiances. What has been done about a major black filmmaker maliciously broadcasting an address in hopes of street justice? What has been done about an extremist group openly putting a bounty on an American citizen? What has been done to manage the hysteria of blacks who apparently believe you get a free assault on anyone who rubs you the wrong way? But it's all a catch-22 for Obama. He can't say anything responsible to his adopted ethnicity in an election year. He probably can't say anything responsible to his own wife. Yet doing nothing right now is as risky as doing anything. Of course that's also the plight of anyone who notices an out-of-place black walking around their neighborhood. When it comes to blacks, the unofficial policy is See Something, Do Nothing--It Might Be Racist!

"You would think there'd be more dustups between lower class redneck whites and blacks in the southern states, but that doesn't seem to happen much. What's the deal?"

"An armed society is a polite society."

"Are Southerners wimpier than I thought?"

Are you kidding no question mark.

"Or do blacks steer clear of tough country boys?"

You're getting closer. Blind hogs and acorns.

"White southerners are belligerent by culture and heritage, but things are awfully quiet down there."

Try replacing the "but" with a "so and see how that reads.

I'm not in the South but in a small town in a flyover state with a strong Southern influence. When my neighbors chat about crime, they usually allude to the fact that they are prepared to confront intruders. Many of my neighbors are prepared for trouble but I don't know of any who go looking for it.

The local black radio station talking heads also mentioned the Jena 6. But their take on it was that community action prevented an injustice to those poor sweet black children who were being oppressed by the racist system.

You would think there'd be more dustups between lower class redneck whites and blacks in the southern states, but that doesn't seem to happen much. What's the deal? Are Southerners wimpier than I thought? Or do blacks steer clear of tough country boys?

White southerners are belligerent by culture and heritage, but things are awfully quiet down there. Even when there's an occasional serious incident of white-on-black violence, it's often in a place like Bensonhurst or Howard Beach (both Italian, by the way).

Population density is much lower in the South, it keeps the amount of conflict way down.

The whole idea, the whole leitmotif of big media seems to be to 'keep whitey down' - 'whitey here means white men only - white women are implicitly allied with the 'other side'. My reading of the affair and of many other cases from Rodney King, James Bird onwards seems to me to be that big media - and the political Democrat/Republican,establishment,'intellegensia', chattering class it is allied to knows 'who's boss' and wants to keep things that way. Every so often whitey needs to be slapped down, in the same way a feisty dog needs to be struck now and then, and reminded of his subordinate position - 'get in line - or else'. The anti-whitey establishment effectively wrested power away from whitey decades ago (whitey the wimpy never really put up a fight anyway).The are fully aware of that fact, and aren't going to give up their supremacy anytime soon. The current periodic dominance displays have gone passed demonstrating authority - really there is no serious chance of whitey ever regaining power. The have more the air of cockiness, arrogance,revenge smugness and sadism about them, the notion of grinding whitey's face into the earth with your boot. There's probably a bigger sexual/Freudian side to this (note well that white women are perhaps the most vociferous anti white male advocates), then most would care to imagine. The idea of animal dominance, barking, teeh baring, scent marking, 'reproducive rights' also comes to mind. Basically it's a very , very deep and reptilian brained emotional psycho-drama, that can whip up untold destructive forces surprisingly quickly cf the Rodney King Riots.

It would be ironic if Martin was a victim of his own racial profiling of Zimmerman. If it was a white guy following him he probably would have realized that it was a resident being reasonably suspicious of a black stranger in a gated community. Seeing a Hispanic may reasonably have triggered the stereotype of "gangster" rather than "vigilant neighbour".

(By the way, what's the deal with the gold foil on the teeth? I guess I'm out of touch with today's youth because I don't get that at all.)

Standard dream interpretation says teeth symbolize social standing. I.e., nightmares about your teeth falling out tend to be about fear of catastrophic loss of social standing. That's what I read somewhere, anyway.

Thus, gold-plated social standing.

"I have no idea why Steve and a lot of other Righties are hanging back on this case."

Because I don't know what precisely happened.

We know what happened after what happened; in the absence of knowing what happened, the media started weaving a narrative that's largely contradicting what we know about what happened, but dovetails well with the leftoid Narrative (which likewise has little to do with what happened).

" waiting for the facts and not jumping to conclusions is indeed a White European idiosyncrasy not to be expected of more vibrant types of people."

Uh, are you sure you've been reading the site the last few days, Rob Roy?

Are you sure you read what he wrote, Kant?

From life-threatening beating to no apparent injuries in a matter of an hour or two? That's some damn fine medical attention...

What I keep reading is that he dropped George with one shot to the nose, then straddled his chest and beat him. He ended up smacking George's head into the pavement. Now, suppose you were armed, and someone was doing that to you, and you shot him. How would you feel about a bunch of Monday-morning quarterbacking about how, gee, your brains hadn't leaked out yet, so your life couldn't have been threatened?

This guy's going to walk.

You would think there'd be more dustups between lower class redneck whites and blacks in the southern states, but that doesn't seem to happen much. What's the deal? Are Southerners wimpier than I thought? Or do blacks steer clear of tough country boys?

White southerners are belligerent by culture and heritage, but things are awfully quiet down there. Even when there's an occasional serious incident of white-on-black violence, it's often in a place like Bensonhurst or Howard Beach (both Italian, by the way).

So, how many times have you asked this question, now? Three, at least, right?

A couple years ago I asked a highly ranked officer in Hillsborough county about this, himself Latino, and he explained what we all know about FBI categorizations: White is a broad race, Hispanic is an ethnicity within that race.

Some "Hispanics" are in fact white. That is, part of the "white race". But the vast majority of them are no more white than is the average Cherokee or Apache Indian. Like the Cherokees and Apaches, the typical "Hispanic" is very distinct racially from whites.

I've watched the video several times now. There is certainly nothing that stands out on the head or clothes. But if you are looking for something, around 1:04-1:06, the back of Zimmerman's head has something. It could be a shadow, or it could be a small laceration that has stopped bleeding if the blood was cleaned by paramedics. It's hard to tell from the expression on the face of the cop who looks at Zimmerman's head whether he sees something or looks for something and does not see anything.

Unless there are clear still photos showing cuts on the back of the head or evidence from the EMS report, I think this is bad news for Zimmerman. Forced to guess, I would say his claims of assault are not substantiated by the video. But who is the witness who said he saw Martin slamming Zimmerman's head into the ground? That will be key, I think.

If Martin wasn't assaulting Zimmerman, what really happened? Even if Zimmerman is lying, I don't think he simply shot Martin. That only makes sense in the fever swamps of conspiracy theory.

There was a story going around the HBD blogs about a year ago of "white crime" in Texas, including pictures of the wanted criminals in that state. They all had names like "Juan Ortiz" and had the skin color of a Mariano Rivera, but the police description of them said that they all were "white".

I would, but there are too many hoodies at my local bowling alley. Kid's of all ages are totally out of control. Jiving fools randomly wander in front of your lane. Fist fights break out over at the pool tables and video arcade. The bathroom looks and smells like an open sewer. And the crowd noise is deafening -- the hoots and shouts drown out the sound of the pins falling.

Well, seems now that La Raza and other Latino groups are facing a conundrum, but they (at least some of them) have made their decision: George can't be Hispanic. However, haven't they seen his voter registration?

Strangely, nobody seems interested in the fact that since Trayvon was a minor, his father Tracy bore responsibility for the damages Trayvon caused. Therefore, Tracy should have controlled Trayvon and taught him not to go around looking and acting like a thug. In Florida the law forbids wearing a hood that obscures a person's identity. Fl. Stat. 876.11 et seq, a holdover from the Ku Klux Klan days. My how roles have reversed, with young black thugs like Trayvon wearing hoodies while preying upon whites and others in the community. Tracy should have snatched that hoodie off Trayvon and burnt it. And maybe George Zimmerman would serve justice better by suing Tracy Martin for the damage his son Trayvon did to George's nose and head. It seems axiomatic that children go bad and become bad adults when parents suffer no penalty for the miscreant acts of the children.

It occurs to me that one of the witnesses says he saw a man in a white T-shirt during the altercation. If Martin was wearing a hoodie, then Zimmerman must have been in the t-shirt shown on the surveillance video. I.e., the fact that there is nothing on the jacket is irrelevant because it is over the t-shirt he was wearing during the altercation.

"The fallback for those failing to frame Zimmerman as a racist murderer is to frame him for 'racial profiling'"

________________________

They've already retreated to this position, with help from all the whites on tv. About two or three days ago as the net became filled with recent pics of Martin, with his tweets, they must have decided, "Better hedge our bets here."

>To Kill a Mockingbird is not a story of racial injustice. It's a devoted daughter's valentine to her father.[...] I got a lot of laughs in 2010 when teachers and others of their ilk were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of TKAM. I'd see teacher's blogs going on breathlessly about what a fine anthem to anti-racism it was, etc. and I'd think, You people not only don't know how to think, you don't even know how to read.<

Since its publication in 1960, it has been reviewed and taught as an anti-racist (the older term was Civil Rights) novel. Wonder why? I guess only one person in America can read.

Try this interesting experiment. Go to Google and in the search field, type the word "to" followed by one space.

I recall that in the autumn after the Channon Christian / Christopher Newsom rape-torture murders here in Knoxville, Tennessee, To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-which-is-not-a-story-about-racial-injustice was heavily promoted by the Young Women's Christian Association (slogan: "Eliminating Racism, Empowering Women") for its being selected for "The Big Read," an National Education Association initiative directed at children and adults. Knoxville promoted the h*ll out of it. (If you read the story at the link in my previous sentence, then you will trust me a bit more when I tell you that the thing was inescapable. It was a full-court-press, across-the-board, stick-it-in-everyone's-face, all-but-xuanchuan-training-session-level campaign for weeks.) Funny, they didn't seem to be able to read, either, for some strange reason. After all, it was the 47th anniversary of publication.

The book's more salient literary qualities are discussed here at JWeek.

Aks youself, if a skinny black kid can knock out a full grown white/hispanic man with one punch, what can a truly big negro do?

The black threat isn't just about size. It's about fast-twitch muscles which allow faster and more explosive power. It's why Donnie Lalonde, the bigger fighter, lost to Sugar Ray Leonard. It's why Ruiz lost to Roy Jones.

Steve, I followed the link in your article to Paul Graham's essay, "What You Can't Say."

Interesting essay, especially the way he so carefully dances around the one thing you cannot say that he makes it obvious what it is he's not saying and how important it is not to say it.

He also seems to have a weird take on political correctness. He writes, "For example, at the high water mark of political correctness in the early 1990s. . ." Is he kidding? The high water mark is right now, and next year it will be even worse.

He also says, "The spread of the term 'political correctness' meant the beginning of the end of political correctness, because it enabled one to attack the phenomenon as a whole without being accused of any of the specific heresies it sought to suppress."

Give me a break! We may be able to make little jokes about political correctness because no one thinks it applies to them, but we all live in the space beneath it's bootheel, ready to be crushed if we defy it.

"...the alleged shooter, currently in hiding from vigilante threats, is a self-described Hispanic man.

But if George Zimmerman was hoping to find support in the Latino community, he should look elsewhere.

“The Latino community joins the African-American community and other communities in condemning George Zimmerman as what he is – a murderer and a racist,” Roberto Lovato, co-founder of the online Latino advocacy organization Presente.org, told The Daily Caller.

The group is acting on Trayvon’s behalf. Presente.org has joined with Color of Change to petition for the arrest of Martin’s murderer.

“Todos somos Trayvon! (We are all Trayvon!),” Presente.org wrote, urging supporters to sign the petition. The group also has a petition to condemn Geraldo Rivera for blaming Martin’s hoodie for his death. According to Lovato, the petition currently has 18,000 signatures.

La Raza has rallied for Martin with the civil rights community as well.

The organization’s urged so much in a March 22 post at the Huffington Post.

“NCLR joins allies in the civil rights community in calling for a real investigation for this grievous failure of justice,” president and CEO Janet Murguía wrote.

Murguía further encouraged members of the Latino community to participate in a rally to demand justice for Martin that evening at the First Shiloh Baptist Church in Sanford, FL."

...

"Lovato added that he is not even sure what Zimmerman’s ethnicity is.

“His background is not clear,” Lovato explained. “Is he Latino? Is he white? Is he both? Who knows? It’s irrelevant. What’s relevant are his actions, his racist comments, and his cold-blooded killing of an innocent young man.”

Paul Graham is awesome, but he lives in the very libertarian, non-PC world of computer programming. Programmers may be the most rational, reality-focused, willing-to-see-things-as-they-are group of people in existence. There is no affirmative action and no unions (even licensing is rare, and mostly a method of brand protection for certain corporations), so it's very much a meritocracy where you don't have to deal with people who were promoted above their ability to meet quotas. In that environment, you don't have to watch what you say nearly as much as people in academia, media, or almost any other field.

OT: On the general-purpose failure of No Child Left Behind - cheating detected all over the place:

http://www.ajc.com/news/cheating-our-children-suspicious-1397022.html

What will it take to get us to give up? To internally realize the truth, and find some set of euphemisms or forbidden thinking, to stop wasting money on getting NAMs comparable to non-NAMs? Why are outcome numbers acceptable when IQ numbers aren't? If we're successful at glossing over one ugly fact or problem, we should spread that success - invent terms like 'street success' and, maybe, 'the undemanding lives / careers that blacks seem to prefer and gravitate to'. Something like that; wrap blacks in a separate language. Anything that weakens the idea that Humans are All the Same (like, that blacks have a higher mix of archaic human DNA than any other group). Once you've got those ideas floating, people will be more open to experience.

As to the video of GZ at the police station--The Daily Caller has blown up the pics. There does *appear* to be something on the back of his semi-bald head. Hard to tell, but it looks as if there is a round gash and from it a long, fairly wide trail of something--either a laceration or maybe more likely a trail of coagulated blood.

Steve. . .My guess is the autopsy will show evidence of recent marijuana use. I would not be surprised if the real reason for the 7-11 trip was to get out of the house to smoke a joint. Do you think it will affect anyone's opinion if it turns out the blood test shows he was high?PatinOK

"Some "Hispanics" are in fact white. That is, part of the "white race". But the vast majority of them are no more white than is the average Cherokee or Apache Indian. Like the Cherokees and Apaches, the typical "Hispanic" is very distinct racially from whites."

I agree. My point is that the politics of this particular case is complicated by two unrelated racial political realities: the one that Steve has mentioned and the one I've seen play out here in Florida before: law enforcement following strictly to the letter that Latinos are white per FBI guidelines because many Latinos want inclusion and acceptance by traditional whites. Trust me when I say that this is not based on some liberals disliking whites and desiring to see them look worse in the stats.

It is my guess that the people who originally pushed this story were unaware that, at least in some parts of Florida, the lines between Latinos and whites has been obliterated at least when it comes to police work.

Just as in the manhunt example, they only identified the Mestizo man as white with no qualifications and got emotional when asked by me about this, I suspect this is why Zimmerman was identified as white. BTW, I have no problems at all with Latinos wanting to be recognized as white.

To add to my comment, anyone who watched the Republican primary debate from Tampa would notice that the ethnic and racial obsessions of Florida nowadays are a world away from the Deep South and Bull Conner.

It was like a Latino homecoming, not that there is anything wrong with that. They're good people.

> the Trayvon tale sounded to the mainstream media like the case they'd been dreaming of since J-school: white man kills black child in cold blood and is freed because of White Privilege!

Speaking of which, ABC News reporter Matt Gutman has been breaking lots of stories concerning Trayvon's shooting. Including this exclusive account from March 20th of the cell phone call from Trayvon's girlfriend DeeDee to him -- which ended just as the final confrontation between Trayvon and Zimmerman began. Gutman heard DeeDee's recording of the call, and reports on its contents! Unfavorable to Zimmerman's claims!

Except, er, it looks like that recording doesn't exist. Perhaps Gutman listened to a different recording, made three weeks after the shooting.

If you want to understand the relationship between a reporter who seems to get most of the scoops favorable to one side and that side's lawyer, read the sections in Bonfire of the Vanities where attorney Albert Vogel, lawyer for Henry Lamb's mother and confidant of Rev. Bacon, takes reporter Peter Fallow to lunch.

"It's like what Lenin said... you look for the person who will benefit, and, uh, uh ..."

Steve Sailer is the Dude! He has roughly the same amount of personal energy. And a beat up car and no cable at home. He wrote the earlier, more radical manifesto for National Review. Do you remember the O'Sullivan 5? No? Well, he was one of those guys.

No doubt high rolling Republicans act like Mr. Lebowski toward him when he shows up at their mansion.

Another political theory: because of Obama's stepping all over this, Marco Rubio will be the Republican veep. I just checked my hunch and found that he spiked on Intrade less than a week ago and is fully in the catbird seat.

I remember several years ago when some of my black students came in with their gold grills on their teeth. I thought then and do now, "Why the heck do black kids, male and female, do all they can to make themselves look downright ugly"?

The trend to make themselves look either ugly or silly (think of the duck bill caps) persists. Once in a while white boys copy it. It looks equally ridiculous.

Steve, what's the name of the young white golfer who wears the flaming colors and the stupid looking bill caps made by Puma?

"..if a skinny black kid can knock out a fully grown white/hispanic man with one punch, ask yourself what can a truly big negro do"?

First Martin was 6'3", while Zimmerman was only 5'9". That six inch height advantage translates into a much greater reach. It also means Martin would be punching DOWNWARDS, thus giving him a big advantage of leverage. Also never underestimate the value of a good old fashioned sucker punch. Blacks have developed this into an art from. I even have a name for it. I call it THE BLACK SUCKER PUNCH! Go on any black web site like world hip-hop and you will find hundreds of examples of this. Getting in the first blow, especially in a street fight is critical. In any case Martin seems to have been a lean, 160 pounds, not the 140 that has been often stated. He played football, so he couldn't have been as frail as the media would like us to believe.

I personally don't believe blacks, in the aggregate, are tougher or stronger then whites. Look at any strongman contest. They are dominated by whites. Of the very few non-white faces almost none of them would be called black or Negro. However I DO BELIEVE blacks, as a group, are more violent then other races. They are also more impulsive too. This may give them an emotional or mental edge in confrontational situations.

Thanks, anon. Ricky Fowler. Yes, heard him interviewed. Seems like a laid back, nice sort. Looks absolutely ridiculous. Asked my daughter if she thought he was cute. She said, "God, he needs to cut that hair, Mom, and... "I don't like guys that get more looks than I do."

Thank God for the internet. This Gutman character has written stuff that an 8th grader wouldn't have submitted.

Of course, the others are no better. Many networks have shown the stills of Zimmerman's head while the anchors screech, "Can YOU see any injuries to him? If not, you're not alone."

Then, along comes the Daily Caller, enlarges the pic, and something can be seen, what looks like a wound with dried blood coming from it.

Point is, nothing is conclusive from the pics, esp. considering police report itself states Zimmerman's wounds were treated at the scene.

Thus, no news agency should state or suggest there were no injuries to him, yet just a bit ago, Trayvon Martin's attorney was on a show saying, "Well, that shows Zimmerman and the police were lying" and Martin's mother is saying the same thing.

Agree with whoever said it--the Martin family attorney doesn't seem to be a top-notch legal mind.

"To-Kill-a-Mockingbird-which-is-not-a-story-about-racial-injustice was heavily promoted by the Young Women's Christian Association (slogan: "Eliminating Racism, Empowering Women") for its being selected for "The Big Read," an National Education Association initiative directed at children and adults. Knoxville promoted the h*ll out of it. (If you read the story at the link in my previous sentence, then you will trust me a bit more when I tell you that the thing was inescapable. It was a full-court-press, across-the-board, stick-it-in-everyone's-face, all-but-xuanchuan-training-session-level campaign for weeks.) Funny, they didn't seem to be able to read, either, for some strange reason."

I'm not saying Harper Lee's sympathies were with the KKK when she wrote TKAM. I'm saying she used the anti-racism Atticus showed as a vehicle for demonstrating what a great guy he was. The book begins and ends with her talking about how Jem got his arm broken, not about how awful what happened to Tom was. Sure, Bob Ewell attacked Jem because hewas teed off that Atticus had defended a black man. But Bob Ewell is white trash. He could as easily have been teed off because Atticus saw him beating Mayella and stopped him. Tom's story doesn't even get as much attention as Boo Radley's. Throughout the book, the focus is on Atticus and what makes him an admirable man. The anti-racism is the medium, not the message.

"As to the video of GZ at the police station--The Daily Caller has blown up the pics. There does *appear* to be something on the back of his semi-bald head."

As I mentioned earlier, yes you can see something if you're looking for it, but if you look at these frames in context, the marks seem to go away, suggesting they may just be shadows. See 1:04-1:06 of the surveillance tape.

But if George Zimmerman was hoping to find support in the Latino community, he should look elsewhere....The group is acting on Trayvon’s behalf. Presente.org has joined with Color of Change to petition for the arrest of Martin’s murderer...La Raza has rallied for Martin with the civil rights community as well.

Svigor: So, BRA runs the "Latino movement" too? Wow.

Ha, ha---Nope, it's the TeeVee which runs the "Latino movement," just like it runs just about everything else in our unfortunate society. Since the TeeVee people mostly say Trayvon was a saint, and Mestizo George is a bloodthirsty KKK-Nazi-Killer, the Latino Leadership naturally says Ditto!

Exactly the same thing would have happened with the "Conservative Republican Movement" if poor George had been of purest Anglo-Saxon descent and a regular Limbaugh listener.

And given that the Editor of National Review declared Rev. Al Sharpton as MLK's heir and Trayvon as the Rosa Parks of our era, maybe the Latino Leaders just want to get weekly columnist gigs on NRO and cushy jobs at AEI and Heritage...

Well, Oprah has made her pronouncement. She just had to stick her nose in this. Yep--said EVERYBODY, everybody of all colors in all parts of the world "knows he was racially profiled and something has to be done."

Hmmm. Maybe the Dems should drop Obama and run Oprah for Prez?

(I guess Oprah doesn't know black youths do indeed commit a high % of crimes, or maybe she doesn't know that George Zimmerman made lots of calls on people he didn't know in his neighborhood.)

I wonder if Oprah ever did a show or made any comments on airport security measures? Think she doesn't" profile" for good reason when she flies?

"I'm saying she used the anti-racism Atticus showed as a vehicle for demonstrating what a great guy he was. The book begins and ends with her talking about how Jem got his arm broken, not about how awful what happened to Tom was. Sure, Bob Ewell attacked Jem because hewas teed off that Atticus had defended a black man. But Bob Ewell is white trash. He could as easily have been teed off because Atticus saw him beating Mayella and stopped him. Tom's story doesn't even get as much attention as Boo Radley's. Throughout the book, the focus is on Atticus and what makes him an admirable man. The anti-racism is the medium, not the message."

I'll put my 2 cents forth on TKM: several plot lines/characters underscore the theme of empathy, that one can't hope to understand others nor should one judge the behavior of others "until you walk in their shoes." That includes but is not limited to race: Mayella Ewell (white trash, and although lies about Boo, was raped/abused by her father; Boo Radley (notorious rumors abound about the town's recluse who is a harmless adult-child locked up by a "foot-washin' Baptist father when he got into some innocent fun as a kid); Tom Robinson(black); Burris Ewell, mean little SOB robbed of his education and humanity the drunk Ewell father; Mrs. Dubose, old lady addicted to morphine, who, in spite of her foul language directed at blacks is termed by Atticus "a great lady" and by Jem "the bravest lady" he ever knew; Mr. Cunningham and his son Walter, poor white farmers, etc.

In short, all these characters are victims in one way or another. I agree that the novel has always been about much more than racial bigotry.

The movie was a good adaptation as far as it went, but it left Americans with the impression that racial bigotry was the theme of the novel, which is an incomplete picture.

Well, Oprah has made her pronouncement. She just had to stick her nose in this. Yep--said EVERYBODY, everybody of all colors in all parts of the world "knows he was racially profiled and something has to be done."

Are there any blacks out there that understand probability and statistics? Seriously.

"The murder uptick is particularly evident in California. Murders nearly doubled in San Jose last year, to 39, from 20 in 2010, and rose in Oakland, San Diego and Sacramento, according to a survey of police departments by The Wall Street Journal and federal statistics."

I'd like Oprah to live in the flatlands of Oakland, or maybe Richmond.

Then, she can travel east to the suburbs where section 8 vouchers have led many blacks and to the schools they now attend.

She can go over crime stats from burglaries to murders then peruse the disciplinary referrals and crime data over the last several years at the schools, noting how the change in demographics matches the change in the other data.

"I'd like Oprah to live in the flatlands of Oakland, or maybe Richmond."

Black women used to work as servile maids, and so whites decided to reward Oprah, an independent woman, with billions. But, her liberated role is really as a neo-maid. Good for nothing else, she massages 'white guilt' and makes whites feel good. She's indeed the most highly paid maid in the world.

And Obama is really like the black chauffer who is driven around by others. But he chauffers around white liberal guilt and self-regard as do-gooders.

Oprah's maidness and Obama's chaufferness have gone from the literal to the metaphysical. They don't actually practice those roles physically but still do so psychologically.

>Bob Ewell is white trash. He could as easily have been teed off because Atticus saw him beating Mayella and stopped him.<

Harper Lee, the creator of Bob Ewell, has Bob assaulting Jem because Bob is angry that Atticus defended a black. Only a different character, not Lee's Bob, would attack Mayella. Bob has a specific meaning and purpose, carefully constructed by author Lee. What may happen in fan fiction is irrelevant.

>I'm not saying Harper Lee's sympathies were with the KKK when she wrote TKAM.<

Come off it.

>I’m saying she used the anti-racism Atticus showed as a vehicle for demonstrating what a great guy he was.<

That being anti-racist is evidence of being a great guy is not a given.

>The anti-racism is the medium, not the message<

I don't think people understand how one uses fiction to propagandize. I've written about this here.

"Even so, I don't see some skinny tall white kid flooring a muscled 5'9" black guy with one punch."

Zimmerman is not muscled. He is the Pillsbury doughboy. Personally I'd rather have five pounds of lean muscle over twenty pounds of chubbiness. And as I said before, never underestimate the value of a good sucker punch, (which blacks have developed into an art form).

Too many people have bought into the myth of the athletic black 'super-man'. Maybe that's subconsciously because athletics and entertainment are the only two venues blacks tend to excel in. There being rather few black rocket scientists and DNA criminologists in real life. (The make-believe world of Hollywood notwithstanding).

Some layers of white society think that being violent, rebellious and a general bad ass is cool. No significant group/class in America thinks that racism is cool, and white boys know that that's the label they risk if they have any type of a public problem with a black person.

I don't know. A lot of the "old money" -- at least those in their 40s -- in Highland Park in Dallas seems to think that "racism" is cool.

"I don't know. A lot of the "old money" -- at least those in their 40s -- in Highland Park in Dallas seems to think that "racism" is cool."

Are the "old money" men in their 40s likely to get into physical fights with anyone? You quoted me saying that the layers of white society that glorify violence are also afraid to be seen as racist. I don't think upper class middle aged guys fit that mold.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.